Intel 320 Feels Slow

[MoInSTL]

Installed an Intel 320, 120GB last week. I am running a SATA II laptop with an i5-520M, 8GB RAM, ATI HD 4570, 512K, Win 7 Pro x64. I have done several tweaks like turning off Superfetch, etc. along with one for my chipset here.

My Crystal Mark scores are reasonable and similar to my AS SSD scores. I can't post an image yet, but the Seq reads are 247, Seq Writes 136, 512 Read 173, Write 134, 4K Read 17.5, Write 37, 4K QD32 Read 144, Write 83.5.

So given my chipset and SATA II the scores are alright. However, it doesn't feel fast. I had a 500GB spinner at 7,200 RPM and honestly this doesn't feel as snappy as I was expecting. I had a Mini 9 with a tiny 16GB SSD and Atom processor netbook and ran stripped down versions of the various Win 7 Release Candidates. It booted fast and I could feel the difference. Maybe the 4K reads were better?

Did a clean install, ran latest Intel chipset drivers first, disabled unnecessary services, running at tweaked high performance power plan, removed Windows stuff I don't use, have first box checked in Write Cache. FWIW, I did most of the SSD Optimizations here Except, I elected for a small 1024 page file. I have 95GB free of 111. Verified TRIM and running in ACPI.

I realize feeling fast is subjective but am I missing something? I know the 320 isn't the fastest but I was able to get it for $138 with overnight shipping. That was too cheap to pass up.

Edit: Long time Anand reader, first time poster. Ex old school OC'er.

 

[Sunburn74]

BTW how did you score that amazing deal?

I think its all in your head.

 

[Veliko]

If you read the SSD FAQ it covers this. I too felt a bit underwhelmed by the difference.

I think it depends how you interpret words like 'instantaneous' really.

 

[Subyman]

Windows 7 caches your most used programs in RAM, so after initial startup programs like MS Word, your internet browser, etc are already cached in RAM so they pop up almost instantly. To see a difference you need to compare startup times, load obscure programs, etc. You may also have bottlenecks in your CPU for heavy tasks. I know netbooks do not benefit much from SSDs because of the processing bottleneck, but that is an extreme example.

 

[Engineer]

BTW how did you score that amazing deal?

Visiting the hot deals forums (or other dedicated hot deals forums that produces deals like this or better (example: Slickdeals.net forums).

The 160GB version has been as low as $155 after rebate and included Battlefield 3 and the 120GB has been as low as $120 after rebate lately.

I know the 80GB was around $80 after rebate just a few days ago.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Installed an Intel 320, 120GB last week. However, it doesn't feel fast. I had a 500GB spinner at 7,200 RPM and honestly this doesn't feel as snappy as I was expecting..

So you fell for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD, and were dissapointed? Join the club.

SSDs are[/ii] faster, but in terms of real-world experience, as long as you have enough RAM for caching, it doesn't feel all that much faster.

Try doing something like a virus scan, something you can objectevely benchmark. I do a malwarebytes scan in like 6 minutes, instead of 30. It's pretty nice for that.

 

[Engineer]

Try doing something like a virus scan, something you can objectevely benchmark. I do a malwarebytes scan in like 6 minutes, instead of 30. It's pretty nice for that.

Probably from lowering all of the seek times (on random reads) down to nearly zero vs a spinner.

 

[groberts101]

So you fell for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD, and were dissapointed? Join the club.

Larry is part of a pretty damned small club in that regard. lol

even my 9 year old doesn't like HDD based systems any more. He went to his buddies house and played games on his computer lately.. came home the next day and said how slow it was compared to his.

That's SSD in general and even kids can see the reduction in wait time. Some just don't mind waiting as much as others do.

 

[upsdriver]

So you fell for the forum hype, and went out and purchased an SSD, and were dissapointed?

This is basically it.

An SSD would make a bigger difference in older computers. But like a previous poster said, it pretty much only makes the first load faster since subsequent loads will mostly be from ram on Win7.

 

[groberts101]

This is basically it.

An SSD would make a bigger difference in older computers. But like a previous poster said, it pretty much only makes the first load faster since subsequent loads will mostly be from ram on Win7.

yeah.. we've heard this for the last few years on ocassion. Now use that SSD for a few months and then boot back over to an HDD. See what happens to the perspective.

Most are surprised how it works in backwards perception even moreso than forward.

 

[upsdriver]

yeah.. we've heard this for the last few years on ocassion. Now use that SSD for a few months and then boot back over to an HDD. See what happens to the perspective.

Most are surprised how it works in backwards perception even moreso than forward.

You're trying a little too hard to justify your purchase. OP is talking about his experience going to an SSD. According to you (and others), the difference between a mechanical drive and an SSD is night and day. In some cases it is, but it wasn't so in his. We're trying to tell him that there is nothing wrong with his rig but the changes he expected was unrealistic.

 

[peonyu]

You have to factor in the drive itself, and the chipset to. I had a Corsair Force 3 SSD for awhile [non GT] and it had boot times of ~7 seconds in Win 7. I gave that same drive to my brother, and his boot times were around 10 seconds. Thats a 30% difference...His comp is a older P5b Deluxe based system [Core 2 duo/Sata II etc]. My comp is a Z68 system with a 5ghz I5 2500 and Sata III.

 

[zCypher]

This is basically it.

An SSD would make a bigger difference in older computers. But like a previous poster said, it pretty much only makes the first load faster since subsequent loads will mostly be from ram on Win7.

Not really. Newer computers can make more use of the faster speeds. My desktop computer saw a much more dramatic improvement when moving from WD Black to OCZ Vertex2 (and subsequently, Vertex3). Going from 5400rpm WD Blue to an ADATA S510 SSD in my x120e laptop marked a distinct performance improvement, but much less significant than the improvement seen in my main desktop computer. The only reason I can think of for this to be so, is the fact that the x120e laptop has a terribly slow processor. Thus I highly doubt that much older systems (at least any system with similarly disappointing processor) will have see a "bigger difference".

Obviously you want to make sure that AHCI is enabled in the BIOS and that you are running off a fresh install with the best/most recent drivers. If your benchmarking numbers are good, then I'm not too sure what you were expecting?

Personally I can't wait till SSDs are at RAM speed. While a ridiculously nice improvement over HDD, I think SSD may still be the bottleneck in a computer which is disappointing.

 

[bryanW1995]

Windows 7 caches your most used programs in RAM, so after initial startup programs like MS Word, your internet browser, etc are already cached in RAM so they pop up almost instantly. To see a difference you need to compare startup times, load obscure programs, etc. You may also have bottlenecks in your CPU for heavy tasks. I know netbooks do not benefit much from SSDs because of the processing bottleneck, but that is an extreme example.

I disagree with the statement about notebooks. My wife's dv7t with a 160 gb intel 320 series feels extraordinarily snappy to me, bested only by my 2500k rig. And I regularly use a 1055t, i7 920 @ 3.9, and 3 other laptops as well.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry is part of a pretty damned small club in that regard. lol

even my 9 year old doesn't like HDD based systems any more. He went to his buddies house and played games on his computer lately.. came home the next day and said how slow it was compared to his.

That's SSD in general and even kids can see the reduction in wait time. Some just don't mind waiting as much as others do.

TBH, I've started to notice "LAG", that I'm wondering if I'm seeing it from the SSD. Stuff like scrolling web pages, clicking to swtich foreground windows, etc.

Something is definately up. If I have to secure-erase the SSD and start over, I'll probably just save myself the future hassle, and go back to the spinner. It may not have zero latency, but the speed that you get, seems more consistent than with an SSD, which can be lightning-fast at one point, and laggy at another.

Edit: Also, I believe that an SSD is an incredibly poor match for my work use-case. You've mentioned the need for "idle time" on a system, for the SSD to perform GC. But my rig is running DC 24/7, and there is no disk idle time, since the DC apps are constantly checkpointing and writing finiished WUs and newly-downloaded WUs to disk.

This is probably why my RAID-0 of SSDs, degraded to performance lower than a single SSD, in less than two weeks.

I might try RAID again, once the IRST 11.5 drives are out.

Edit: It's getting worse. Moved the mouse to wake monitor from standby, went to password screen, typed in Password and pressed ENTER. Waited 10s, finally my desktop came up.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah.. we've heard this for the last few years on ocassion. Now use that SSD for a few months and then boot back over to an HDD. See what happens to the perspective.

Most are surprised how it works in backwards perception even moreso than forward.

Anand likes to say that when you spend a while on an ssd then go back to an hdd, it feels like the computer is broken. Larry didn't have that experience bc he used poor, small ssd's in raid 0 with no trim or gc.

 

[upsdriver]

Not really. Newer computers can make more use of the faster speeds. My desktop computer saw a much more dramatic improvement when moving from WD Black to OCZ Vertex2 (and subsequently, Vertex3). Going from 5400rpm WD Blue to an ADATA S510 SSD in my x120e laptop marked a distinct performance improvement, but much less significant than the improvement seen in my main desktop computer. The only reason I can think of for this to be so, is the fact that the x120e laptop has a terribly slow processor. Thus I highly doubt that much older systems (at least any system with similarly disappointing processor) will have see a "bigger difference".

A quick search shows the x120e to have a Fusion 1.5Ghz. I'd imagine there would be a CPU bottleneck there. By "older computers" I was thinking more of a C2D or Athlon 64 x2.

 

[bryanW1995]

TBH, I've started to notice "LAG", that I'm wondering if I'm seeing it from the SSD. Stuff like scrolling web pages, clicking to swtich foreground windows, etc.

Something is definately up. If I have to secure-erase the SSD and start over, I'll probably just save myself the future hassle, and go back to the spinner. It may not have zero latency, but the speed that you get, seems more consistent than with an SSD, which can be lightning-fast at one point, and laggy at another.

Edit: Also, I believe that an SSD is an incredibly poor match for my work use-case. You've mentioned the need for "idle time" on a system, for the SSD to perform GC. But my rig is running DC 24/7, and there is no disk idle time, since the DC apps are constantly checkpointing and writing finiished WUs and newly-downloaded WUs to disk.

This is probably why my RAID-0 of SSDs, degraded to performance lower than a single SSD, in less than two weeks.

I might try RAID again, once the IRST 11.5 drives are out.

I also run dc 24/7, so that's not it. Although I do have boinc on my wd20ears instead of the ssd.

Btw, my x25m g2 80 gb drive is running dual use as an 18.6gb cache and 57 gb data drive in raid 0, and it still is light years faster than any spindle drive I've ever seen/heard of.

 

[groberts101]

Larry didn't have that experience bc he used poor, small ssd's in raid 0 with no trim or gc.

close.. but not quite it either.

poor?.. not quite true if you know how to work around the inherent limitations of the barefoot controller. Cheap? well yes of course since you typically get what you pay for and they are certainly entry level drives. That's why I built a 6 drive array with them to see where SSD's could lead me in time saved for my workloads. They sure weren't slow by any standard although I never cared for the cumulative latency when adding multiple drives together in raid. 1 Sandforce drive has less latency than 6 Indy drives in that regard.

he used too small a drive?.. yes.

no trim?.. yes of course and that hurts that older controller more than most new models available these days due to poor on-the-fly recovery.

no GC?.. completely incorrect. Indilinx has excellent GC but he uses VM's or folds(or whatever he does) on a 24/7 basis and the drive is never allowed sufficient idle time to pull ahead in the recovery process.

All that needs to be done is to use this tool on ocassion and immediate recovery is at his fingertips.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...BC-for-OCZ-SSD&p=567592&viewfull=1#post567592

another option would be this tool which is also excellent at forcing immediate recovery as well. Just be sure to check the "with FF" option to avoid writing incorrect HDD data to the SSD's free space. That would only make things worse. Can't seem to find the link but it's here on the anandtech site at bottom of this thread.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2076734

and brief description in the way it works here.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...How-does-AS-Cleaner-work&highlight=as+cleaner

Will work for most other SSD controllers as well.. although it comes at a small price as the data is physically written and adds to the wear of the drive moreso than wiper or Intels similar TRIM utility.


sorry to the OP for veering off-topic here. Larry can PM me with any more questions about getting straightened out there.

 

[serpretetsky]

I realize feeling fast is subjective but am I missing something?

Well, first of all, does it actually feel any faster? or no?
If you're feeling no performance difference, then i would have to say something is wrong.

Can you be more specific where you're not "feeling" the speed?
Boot times? (can you give us a boot time, from the end of your POST sequence to the login screen/desktop)
Programs not starting fast enough (if so, which programs, and how long to start them?)
Windows OS not as snappy as you though? (does the start menu populate instantly? does control panel populate instantly? does Add/Remove programs populate instantly?)

edit: did you test your "fresh" system before you started tweaking and optimizing it?

 

[groberts101]

I'm of the same general opinion as that guy^. Even my kids and small nieces/nephews can tell the difference with SSD.

Something seems wrong there either software/driver related or in interpretation.

 

[Coup27]

Anybody who uses an SSD system for a week, and then uses a HDD system for a week and cannot tell a massive difference has done something wrong on the SSD system. Unfortunately Larry, you fall into that catagory. Inadvertently you actually did everything you could have done to sabotage your SSD experiment and neither your combination of SSDs, configuration method or usage pattern is likely to be repeated by the average user. As you don't give the system much, if any idle time, you would have been far better off with a single Intel drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Brand-new benchmark

Fresh RAID-0 benchmark

After a week, degraded

After fresh (TRIMed) re-install of Win7, current status

 

[Coup27]

Point proven.

 

[groberts101]

hate to say it here Larry(and just know I'm not trying to pick on you).. but with a small drive already that full in combination with the usage pattern you previously described?.. TRIM alone will not make a world of difference. Better than without for sure on that particular controller.. but you have too much working against you there.

going from a large boat with a leak.. to a smaller one with a leak.. will still put you at the bottom of the bay eventually.

Have you read my other replies(with included links) to enable you to manually TRIM these drives for speed maintenance?